Source · Select Committees · Health and Social Care Committee
Recommendation 3
3
Accepted
Paragraph: 18
Roll-out patient information campaign to clarify NHS dental services and entitlements
Conclusion
A lack of public awareness about NHS dental services and how practices operate is contributing to access issues. The Government and NHS England should roll-out a patient information campaign with the aim of improving awareness of how NHS dentistry will work and ensure the public are better informed about what they are entitled to. This should clarify common misconceptions, for example, about patient registration, recall periods, and NHS dental charges and exemptions.
Government response summary AI-generated
The government accepts the recommendation, clarifying that there is no formal patient registration system. It supports adherence to NICE recall guidelines and details existing measures from 2022 reforms for practices to provide urgent dental care and use risk-based recalls, with NHS England monitoring compliance and sharing data with ICBs.
Summary of the government's response below — read the verbatim text to verify.
Paragraph Reference:
18
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government · verbatim extract
Accepted
Accept The Department accepts this recommendation. We agree that patients need to be well informed about how NHS dentistry works and the care they are entitled to. NHS England has created a new group of Patient and Public Voice (PPV) partners and are working on a suite of public facing documents that will support public knowledge and understanding, including on dental recall intervals and how the whole dental team can be used to deliver patient care. The PPV Group will consider how we can raise awareness further on an ongoing basis. Our reforms in 2022 also implemented measures to ensure that NHS dental practices provide up to date information for patients. It is now a contractual requirement that all dental practices must review and update their NHS website profile information every quarter which includes what services they offer and whether they are accepting new NHS patients. We acknowledge that compliance to this requirement should be higher, and NHS England have recently put in place additional measures to monitor and improve this. Quarterly reports are now produced and made available to ICBs who have the contractual powers to ensure adherence to these requirements.
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